The camp tried hard to dissuade them. Naturally
neither listened. They packed the Boy’s
sled and set off on the morning of the third, to Kaviak’s
unbounded surprise and disgust, his view of life being
that, wherever Mac went, he was bound to follow.
And he did follow—­made off as hard as his
swift little feet could carry him, straight up the
Yukon trail, and Farva lost a good half of that first
morning bringing him home.

Just eight days later the two men walked into the
Cabin and sat down—­Potts with a heart-rending
groan, Mac with his jaw almost dislocated in his cast-iron
attempt to set his face against defeat; their lips
were cracked with the cold, their faces raw from frostbite,
their eyes inflamed. The weather—­they
called it the weather—­had been too much
for them. It was obvious they hadn’t brought
back any dogs, but—­

“What did you think of Anvik?” says the
Boy.

“Anvik? You don’t suppose we got
to Anvik in weather like this!”

“How far did you get?”

Mac didn’t answer. Potts only groaned.
He had frozen his cheek and his right hand.

They were doctored and put to bed.

“Did you see my friends at Holy Cross?”
the Boy asked Potts when he brought him a bowl of
hot bean-soup.

“You don’t suppose we got as far as Holy
Cross, with the wind—­”

“Well, where did you get to? Where
you been?”

“Second native village above.”

“Why, that isn’t more’n sixteen
miles.”

“Sixteen miles too far.”

Potts breathed long and deep between hot and comforting
swallows.

“Where’s the Boy’s sled?”
said the Colonel, coming in hurriedly.

“We cached it,” answered Potts feebly.

“Couldn’t even bring his sled home! Where’ve
you cached it?”

“It’s all right—­only a few
miles back.”

Potts relinquished the empty soup-bowl, and closed
his eyes.

* * * *
*

When he opened them again late in the evening it was
to say:

“Found some o’ those suckers who were
goin’ so slick to Minook; some o’ them
down at the second village, and the rest are winterin’
in Anvik, so the Indians say. Not a single son
of a gun will see the diggins till the ice goes out.”

“Then, badly off as we are here,” says
the Colonel to the Boy, “it’s lucky for
us we didn’t join the procession.”

When Mac and the Boy brought the sled home a couple
of days later, it was found that a portion of its
cargo consisted of a toy kyak and two bottles of hootchino,
the maddening drink concocted by the natives out of
fermented dough and sugar.

Apart from the question of drinking raised again by
the “hootch,” it is perhaps possible that,
having so little else to do, they were ready to eat
the more; it is also true that, busy or idle, the human
body requires more nourishment in the North than it
does in the South.